The Ballon d'Or won't be awarded for the first time since 1956, another sporting casualty of the coronavirus pandemic confirmed by France Football on Monday.
The reasons are clear and mostly understandable: in this most unusual of years, one in which competitions have either been significantly delayed, altered or canceled entirely, how can a true winner of world soccer's most prestigious individual award be chosen?
“It’s such a strange year that we couldn’t treat it as an ordinary one," France Football editor Pascal Ferré told The Associated Press. “It isn’t a decision we took lightly, but we had to accept it couldn’t be a normal or typical Ballon d’Or winner, and what really worried us it that it wouldn’t be fairly awarded.